If any modern artist in the pop-culture pantheon deserves to be bestowed with the title “Renaissance Man,” it is Steve Martin. Not only is he an author of novels and novellas, screenplays and short ...

Before you get excited thinking that Martin's going to revive his coked-up, arrow-through-the-head, '70s-style stand-up antics, just go ahead and watch the video after the jump of him going off on ...

Beyoncé's surprise new country album has kicked open the saloon doors to a new audience. While this may not be Beyoncé's first rodeo when it comes to country music, people are now exploring the genre ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was ...

Pop superstar Beyoncé released "Texas Hold 'Em" a few weeks ago and it features an instrument that she had never emphasized before. This hit song, on her new (and hugely popular) Cowboy Carter album, ...

A new generation of artists have brought African Americans back to the forefront of the banjo scene. Take, for example, Rhiannon Giddens, whom you can hear behind me. Black musicians have been a part ...

Drowned in Sound’s putting on a relative glut of gigs around the end of January – more news on others to follow, for now the first: Wild Beasts, School of Language, It Hugs Back and Banjo or Freakout ...

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